


C'est la Mort

by Rusoe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:05:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rusoe/pseuds/Rusoe
Summary: Poe dies. Armitage fails to successfully move on.





	C'est la Mort

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by [this](http://green-grape-gaze.tumblr.com/post/171302043367/when-you-were-gone) heart-wrenching tumblr post.
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name by The Civil Wars, which really doesn't have much to do with this fic other than I was listening to it as I wrote.
> 
> ...Also, this fic is unbeta'd, so...you have been warned.

They say it happened so quickly that he probably didn’t feel any pain.

Armitage isn’t sure what about that statement is supposed to make him feel better, not when the last time they spoke had ended in angry words—a stupid argument about Poe leaving his socks all over the floor that now just seems so fucking inconsequential, not when the funeral has to be closed casket because the body’s so mangled that even the morticians’ magic isn’t enough to make it look like Poe again.

They cremate the body, with plans to have half of the ashes buried with Poe’s mother and the other half scattered by airplane, over the bay that Poe had loved to spend weekends flying over in his rusty old Cessna.

After the service, people come up to him to give their condolences. The words sound like empty platitudes to his ears, and soon they all begin to blend together into a twisted collection of somber faces and “I’m so sorry”s and “I can’t imagine”s, and once, even, “you should be happy that he’s with God now”.

He leaves five minutes into the reception, right in the middle of one of Poe’s old Air Force buddies’ rousing rendition of some stupid escapade they’d gone on while serving a tour, and goes back home, back to the house that he and Poe had bought together almost four years ago.

Opening the door, he only manages to take a couple steps into the foyer before having to stop in his tracks.

Everything in this place reminds him of Poe, from the framed photographs hanging on the walls, to the hideous, kitschy furniture that Poe had insisted upon getting despite the way it clashes horribly with the wallpaper.

Distantly, he feels his throat clench up and he gets the distinct urge to vomit.

Poe’s little rescue mutt comes up to snuffle at his ankles, breaking him from his frozen trance. All at once he feels the energy bleed out of his body, and, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, he crumples to his knees.

“Aren’t we a pair,” he murmurs, gathering the normally excitable ball of orange fur into his arms, then burying his face into BB’s side. “Fucking idiot’s gone and left us all alone now.”

BB whines and squirms around to lick at his face, and for once, Armitage just lets him, doesn’t loudly complain about how unsanitary it is, or threaten to send him back to the shelter if he does it again.

It’s not like there’s anyone around to hear him, anyway. Not anymore.

He sleeps in the guest bedroom that night.

\--

Over the next few weeks, he gets a steady stream of visitors and well-wishers, come to check up on him, or to maybe have a chat and reminisce about Poe.

Rey and Finn stop by almost every other day, each time with some new scheme to try and drag him out of the house with them to “have some fun for once”.

It’s tedious. He takes to ignoring their calls and pretending that he’s not home when people try to stop by. After a while, they all stop trying.

He doesn’t blame them—they were Poe’s friends, after all, not his. He doesn’t have any friends of his own. He’d never really seen the need for them, had always said, when Poe tried to cajole him into joining a book club or some shit like that so he could meet new people, that he’d never need anyone other than Poe. Besides, he’d never really been comfortable around other people, had always preferred the reassuring security of being alone in his own room, with maybe just a good book and a hot drink to keep him company.

Not like Poe, extroverted, easy-going, able to forge connections with total strangers at the drop of a hat. He relishes being the center of attention and thrives in social situations, finding a joy in them that Armitage never really could understand.

Relished. Thrived.

\--

Days seem to stretch on, each one blending into the next.

It’s funny, Armitage thinks, he always used to be the type of person who’d schedule every movement at least a month in advance, finding solace in rigidly defined routines.

Poe had hated that. He preferred spontaneity, the excitement of not knowing what would come next, and the flexibility of being able to just “go with the flow” at any given moment.

It’d been one of the many things they frequently argued over.

Now, even though Poe’s gone and he’s free to go back to as structured a life as he’d like, he can barely bring himself to do anything more than feed the dog twice a day.

He spends most days in bed, either sleeping or just staring blankly up at the ceiling. The only times he leaves the house are when he takes the dog out on the occasional, sporadic walk to the local grocery store to replenish any supplies.

He’s all but moved into the guest bedroom now, hasn’t even been upstairs since Kes had called him on his cell and told him that he might need to sit down.

It’s not healthy, he knows. Still, every time he steps foot on the staircase, the memories threaten to overwhelm him and he’s just not ready to go up there and look upon the bed they had shared together once upon a lifetime ago, or to see Poe’s clothes hanging in the closet and scattered in bits and pieces across the floor, exactly the way they were the day he left them, as if he’d just gone out for a short walk and would return home soon.

Just the thought of it sends a fresh stab of pain through his heart.

No, he won’t go up there.

He _can’t_.

Not now, anyway.

Not yet.

\--

He’s on one of his trips to the grocery store one day when he sees something that makes him pause.

A flyer, plastered against one of the many trashy tabloids he sees on his way to the check-out counter in the grocery store, the ones with salacious headlines loudly promising steamy details about rumored new developments in the love lives of B-list celebrities.

_Spirit Messenger_ , it reads in loopy, faux cursive font. _Talk with your departed loved ones. Palm reading. Tarot cards. Call for add. info + pricing._

It’s stupid, he knows. Just another scam, run by an unscrupulous charlatan with no qualms about taking advantage of other people’s grief.

And yet, even as he tells this to himself, a tiny little part of him that he hasn’t heard from in a very long time can’t help but wonder, _what if it’s not_?

He wants to see Poe again. The pain of missing him feels like an open wound, and he’s still gushing blood all over the floor. If there was any chance, no matter how small, to just see him one more time, to be able to talk to him, to just get the chance to tell him…tell him that…

His fingers ghost along the flyer’s edge, and, after a moment of brief hesitation, he reaches out and grabs it, folding it into neat quarters before tucking it away in his pocket.

Just in case, he tells himself. He doesn’t have to actually use it, but it’d be good to keep it around anyway. For the amusement value.

It’s a nice little farce.

\--

He’s standing on the sidewalk at the corner of a road junction, right outside of an unexpectedly normal-looking two-story brownstone. Looking down again at the piece of paper in he’s got tightly clenched in his hands, he double-checks, then triple-checks the address.

Despite his doubts, there’s no mistaking that he’s at the right place.

He takes a deep breath, then shoves the paper into his pocket as he climbs up the few steps to the doorway.

This is it.

He rings the doorbell.

The door swings open almost instantly, something he’d find slightly unsettling if not for the fact that he’s immediately distracted by the uncomfortably intense look in the eyes of the stranger who’s now standing right in front of him.

He swallows, mouth suddenly dry, his whole body screaming at him to just give up, turn around, and leave.

“Is this the place that does spirit messages?” he asks, instead.

The stranger, a tall, broad shouldered man with shoulder-length black hair, nods.

“Come in,” he says, voice startlingly deep.

Armitage nods back and steps over the threshold, following cautiously as the man turns and leads him through a hallway and down a flight of stairs.

Inside, the air is stale and filled with dust, with mildew and discolored spots decorating the peeling wallpaper.

It’s clear that no one’s paid much attention to the upkeep of the place in quite some time—an idle observation Armitage makes as they walk along without talking, the only sounds breaking the silence being the ominous creak of the floorboards beneath their feet.

The uncomfortable crawling sensation he’d felt underneath his skin at the door intensifies, but he steadfastly ignores it, choosing instead to push onwards.

They come to a stop at an old set of double doors. The silver door handles are almost black with rust, and its wood paneling is stained with some unidentifiable substance.

The man pulls out a set of keys from his pocket and unlocks the doors. In the dim lighting, Armitage can just make out a mostly bare room, furnished only with a single cabinet, table, and chair all placed up against the furthest wall. Most curious of all, however, is the large, white outline of a circle painted right in the center of the room’s concrete floor, about three meters across in diameter.

Flipping on the lights, the man walks into the room. Armitage follows, then stops as the man turns around and once again focuses upon him with that intense stare.

“I realize that we haven’t made proper introductions yet,” he says to Armitage, offering him his hand. “Forgive me. I am Kylo Ren.”

Armitage takes it, and they shake. “Armitage Hux.”

The man—Kylo Ren—gives him a curt smile.

“You said that you were here to send a spirit message? Is there someone in particular you’re hoping to talk to?”

“I…yes,” Armitage says, a little haltingly. “My…significant other. He passed recently.” The words seem to stick in his throat.

Kylo Ren nods. “Do you have anything of his on you? Or maybe something he gave you, like a keepsake?”

Armitage has to take a second to think about it. He’s not really the sentimental type, doesn’t have any special objects of Poe’s that he’s been carrying around on a regular basis. And all the clothes he’s wearing are his own, unsurprisingly, given that none of Poe’s clothes would fit him anyway.

There is one thing though—a slightly creased, yellowing polaroid he’s got in his wallet. The picture was taken at a friend’s Fourth of July barbeque a year or so back.

He pulls out the photo, fingering one of its worn-away edges. In it, Poe is grinning broadly, his arm carelessly slung around Armitage’s shoulders and tugging their bodies flush against one another, while his own past self looks stoically towards the camera with only the faintest hint of a smile.

He’d been against getting the picture taken at the time, a result of years of indulging the habit of shying away from being photographed due to dislike of how overexposed his pasty skin always ended up turning out, but Poe had convinced him to do it just that once and he’d let it happen.

Now, of course, he regrets that he hadn’t been in more photographs with Poe, regrets that he doesn’t have more snapshots of their relationship together, however unphotogenic, to look at now that it’s all over.

“May I?” Ren says, holding out his hand.

Armitage hesitates briefly, but then, against his best judgment, hands it over without a word.

Ren gives it a cursory glance.

“This will do,” he says, turning and walking briskly over to the cabinet.

Armitage watches as he throws it open and begins to take out all sorts of odd-looking containers and objects, setting them one by one on the table besides him.

He feels lost, unsure of what’s going on.

“Hold on,” he says, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the shuffle. “What are you doing?”

Ren doesn’t even pause his movements to look at him as he answers. “I’m opening a link between this world and the world of the dead so that you can talk to your departed loved one.”

“I…You are? ...But,” Armitage stammers, struggling for words. “…We never even discussed prices. I don’t even know how much this all costs.”

At this, Ren laughs, a harsh, heavy sound that echoes around the confines of the small room to create an unsettling effect. “Don’t worry about that,” he says, turning around with a large, ceramic bowl filled with an odd mix of powders in his hands. “We’ll discuss cost later.”

Defeated, Armitage falls silent, settling for just observing from the sidelines as Ren places the bowl in the very center of the circle, then walks around it, lighting and placing candles along the circle’s edge in regular intervals.

Then, after seemingly finishing arranging the candles to his satisfaction, Ren walks back to the cabinet and pulls out a long, sharp dagger, its blade glinting wickedly under the dancing light of the flickering candles.

Armitage takes an involuntary step backwards at the spike of fear that runs up his spine. He’s suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that no one knows he’s here and that this mysterious, off-putting stranger could murder him in this basement right this instant and no one would even realize he’d gone missing for weeks, maybe even months.

Thankfully, that doesn’t really seem to be Ren’s goal, not yet, at least.

“I’ll need some of your blood for this,” he explains as he draws closer to Armitage, knife held flat across his two open palms in a relatively innocuous-looking position. “If you could extend your palm for me? I promise it won’t hurt much.”

Biting back his doubts and worries, Armitage forces himself to take a step forward and extend out his hand, palm facing upwards.

Ren takes his hand in his own, then, with the knife, cuts a clean line straight across his palm. It takes a second before anything starts to happen, but then they both watch as the thin cut starts to bloom with blood.

“Come,” Ren then says, pulling Armitage towards the circle’s center. “Hold your hand like this.”

He positions Armitage’s hand right over the bowl and waits as the blood trickles down his fingers to fall in little, ruby red droplets onto the rest of the bowl’s contents.

“That’s enough,” Ren says after they’ve collected four drops, and he pushes Armitage’s hand away from the bowl before pulling out a roll of medical tape from a pocket and taping up the wound. “Now then.”

He turns and picks up a candle from the ground besides them, then uses it to light everything in the bowl on fire. Then, before Armitage can stop him or even make a sound in protest, he takes Armitage’s photograph and throws it into the flames.

All at once, Armitage’s world narrows to one single point and he’s moving before he’s even really registered it, shouting, “No!” as he lunges for the bowl, desperate to rescue his most treasured memento from his and Poe’s relationship from imminent destruction.

His fingers just manage to brush the bowl’s lip before there’s suddenly a very bright flash of white light and he’s thrown backwards by an unexpected force.

When he finally opens his eyes again, grimacing a little at the pain of his body impacting the floor, he finds his jaw dropping open in shock.

Because there, standing right in the middle of the circle, looking exactly like he did the day he’d died down to the exact clothing he’d been wearing right before he’d stormed out of the house after their very last fight, staring right back at him with an equally stunned expression, is none other than Poe Dameron.

“Poe,” he says—or croaks, more like—his hand shaking as he raises it to just _touch_ him. “…Poe? Is that…you?”

Poe, or the thing that looks like Poe, continues to stare back at him. “… ‘Tage?”

It’s his voice. Poe’s voice.

The sound of it fills his heart with feelings so strong that it feels fit to burst.

“It _is_ you,” he breathes. “It’s really you.”

His trembling fingers, finally finding their way to the edge of Poe’s silhouette, press forward expecting to feel a solid form only to pass right through Por’s body, as if he was simply a projection.

Right. Poe isn’t back, not really. This is just Poe’s spirit, summoned from the dead so that Armitage can have the chance to talk to him one last time. What this means about the existence of an afterlife, or even a higher power, Armitage doesn’t know, but he can’t find it in himself to care about any of that right now. The only thing that matters is making amends with the man standing right in front of him.

“Poe, I—” he starts to say, not knowing where exactly to begin but wanting to say something, _anything_ before his time inevitably runs out.

Poe, the perpetual asshole that he is, picks this moment to interrupt him.

“Armitage, what are you doing?”

Armitage stares at him. “You—what am _I_ doing? You colossal idiot. You went and fucking _died_ and you’re asking me what _I’m_ doing?”

Instead of an answer, Poe has the audacity to give him one of his stupid smiles, soft, and sad, and filled with a warmth that makes Armitage’s heart ache.

“I’m sorry, ‘Tage,” he says, in that tone of voice he always used to use when comforting Armitage after nightmares, or even just particularly bad days, and it’s. Just. Not. _Fucking_. Fair.

“ _You don’t get to tell me that you’re sorry!_ ” The words come out louder than he meant them to. Every emotion that he’d kept bottled up since the funeral—no, since the phone call, is threatening to pour out of him all at once, and he wants to scream, he wants to hit something, he wants…he wants…

“You…you don’t get to tell me that you’re sorry when it was my fault.” His voice is shaking, and he pauses for a second to take a deep breath and steady it.

“ _I’m_ the one who should be sorry. And I am. I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have said those things when we were fighting, and if I’d taken the car to the shop the week before like you _told_ me to, then—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on just a minute.” Poe reaches out towards his face but remembers his incorporeal state just as his fingers pass through Armitage’s cheeks and settles for pretending to place his hands on Armitage’s shoulders instead.

“‘Tage. ‘Tage. Look at me. _Armitage_.” His eyes are the same as they had been in life, warm and brown with hints of various emotions drifting through them, like mischief, or lust, or, like now, _love_.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“It _was_.”

“No,” Poe tells him, his voice gentle but firm. “It _wasn’t_.”

Armitage feels an irrational wave of _pure anger_ course through his veins. “I am not going to argue with you about this, Dameron. You said it yourself that night—if you hadn’t met me—”

Poe reels back, as if stung. “I didn’t mean it!”

“At least some part of you must have or you wouldn’t have said it!” He’s crying, he vaguely realizes as he feels his cheeks become damp with tears. It’s stupid. He hasn’t cried since before the funeral, and he doesn’t know why his body has decided to start doing so now.

“You know, it doesn’t have to be this way.” The unexpected voice makes Armitage jump. He’d been so caught up in Poe’s reappearance, he realizes, he’d forgotten that, all along, they hadn’t been alone.

Kylo Ren slowly walks up behind them, stopping about a meter to Armitage’s right.

“This,” he says, gesturing towards Poe in the circle, “barely scratches the very surface of my powers. I can make him solid again for a short time, if you wish. Or, I can bring him back entirely, exactly the way he was or better, to live out the rest of what would have been his natural lifespan.”

He clasps his hands behind his back. “That is, if you’re willing to make a deal with me.”

“He’s not going to make any deal with you,” Poe cuts in, eyes flashing dangerously.

Ren looks at him with no small amount of disdain. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“…What are your terms?” Armitage finds himself asking, eyes unable to meet Poe’s.

Kylo Ren smiles, a cold, farcical manipulation of the lips that sends a sense of unease into Armitage’s heart, and in that instant, he knows where this is about to go.

“To obtain something, something of equal value must be lost. That is the Law of Equivalent Exchange. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life…for a life.”

Poe sputters. “ _No_. ‘Tage, you can’t do this—"

Armitage ignores him. “You’re saying that, in return for my life, you’ll grant his back to him.”

Ren nods. “Yes.”

“And a new body?” Armitage presses, searching for any loopholes.

“ _Armitage!_ ”

Ren eyes the two of them with what could almost be interpreted as mirth. “Of course. He’ll be exactly the way he was right before you two had your lovers’ spat and he stormed out to take your car on a joyride. No tricks, I promise.”

Armitage pauses briefly to think the terms over, then narrows his eyes. “And what do _you_ receive from this exchange?”

“Clever, aren’t you?” Ren says, his lips twitching. “What I ask in return is claim to your immortal soul. While others move on to an afterlife, your spirit will be bound to me to use however I please, either for the rest of eternity or until the moment I see fit to extinguish it.”

Armitage nods, somewhat satisfied.

“Don’t you dare,” Poe says. He’s angry now, Armitage can tell, and maybe a little scared too.

“You’re better than this, ‘Tage. I know it. What if it had been you who died, and me who was talking to the crazy nutjob? Would you want me to do this?”

Armitage hesitates. “Poe…”

“Don’t do it. _Please_.” Poe’s voice breaks on the last word and Armitage feels his heart break a little with it but it’s too late. He’s already made his decision.

“I’m sorry, Poe,” he whispers. “I _have_ to.”

He turns to Kylo Ren.

“I accept.”

Ren grins, shark like.

“Done.”

He snaps his fingers, eyes glowing a bright, glaring red.

Suddenly, Armitage feels dizzy, like all the blood has rushed out of his head. Slowly, he lowers himself to the ground, hands blinding groping around for a surface to steady himself with.

A stab of pain shoots through his body and he can’t stop himself from crying out—but then Poe’s there, kneeling next to him, _touching_ him. He’s talking too, saying something to him, but the pain is growing and it’s hard to focus on his words.

He dimly realizes that with every second that passes, it’s also becoming harder and harder to breathe.

Everything’s happening too fast.

Vaguely, he remembers that there’s just one last thing that he needs to do before he’s out of time, one last thing he needs to say—the one thing that he’d come here to tell Poe in the first place.

“I love you,” he says, hoping that Poe will understand everything he’s trying to convey. “I never said it enough, but I love you so, so much.”

Poe’s crying too now, fat tears dripping down his cheeks and splashing down onto the cement floor.

“I know, you fucking idiot,” Poe tells him with a wet laugh. “I know.”

And that—Poe’s face filled with equal parts love and heartbreak—is the last thing Armitage sees before he’s engulfed in a burning, all-consuming pain and he’s screaming at the top of his lungs, screaming for what seems like an eternity before suddenly—nothing.


End file.
